Joyces Investments | Page 7

a man caste in the
community, but outside of certain restrictions, and very galling ones, he
had let her severely alone. Now that liberty and great means had fallen
to her, what use should she make of them?
She stood a moment looking around her, after she had alighted from the
train at the little brown one-room station-house, trying to take it all in at
one glance of her brilliant eyes. She had never been here before, but she
had had countless photographs made, and supposed herself thoroughly
acquainted with the spot. But, to some minds, photographs are
confusing things, jumbling up the points of compass in an unreliable
manner. Joyce found that it was almost as strange as if never pictured
out before her, and a great deal uglier than she had supposed. She
shivered as she gazed around upon the bleakness everywhere, perhaps

largely accentuated by a gray, chilly morning of early spring, with the
small patches of snow, left by winter, blackened and foul. Ellen Dover,
at her elbow, remarked plaintively,
"There, Miss Joyce, I knowed you'd need your sealskin such a day," to
which the girl only answered, with an odd smile,
"Even a sealskin couldn't stop that shiver, Ellen; it might make it worse,
indeed. Come, I think this is the way to the office. Doesn't it say
something over that door at the right? Yes, there it is--come on!"
They traversed a considerable space of uneven ground crossed and
recrossed by the narrow-gauge tracks upon which the sand and grit
trucks ran, avoiding one or two localities where steam shot upward
from the ground in a witch-like and erratic manner, with short angry
hisses and chopping sounds that suggested danger, and finally stood
before the door designated "OFFICE" in plain lettering. Joyce looked
around at her companion with a perplexed little laugh.
"Do we knock, Ellen? How does one do at a place like this,--just walk
in as it 'twere a shop, or wait till you're let in, as at a house?"
"Goodness me!" bridled Ellen, gazing at the uninviting exterior. "Why
should you be knocking and waiting when you own the whole business,
I'd like to know? Just push in and tell who you be--that's what I'd do."
"Oh, I think not, Ellen--would you? I'd rather err on the safe side,
seems to me. Do let's be polite, at least! Yes, I'll knock," and a timid
rat-tat-tat, made by a small kid-covered knuckle, announced the first
visit of the present owner of the great Early Works.
After an instant's delay the door was partly opened, and a preoccupied
face, with perpendicular lines between the keen gray eyes, was thrust
out impatiently, with the words,
"Well, why don't you come in? What--Oh, excuse me, ladies.
Good-morning! What can I do for you?"

"Is Mr. Dalton in?" asked Joyce embarrassedly.
"Yes, I am he; please walk in. You'll have to excuse the litter here. I've
been too busy to let them clean it up. Here's a chair, Miss--and here,
ma'am"--calmly overturning two close beside the desk, that were
heaped with papers.
Having thus seated his guests, the man stood in an inquiring attitude,
surreptitiously glancing at Joyce who seemed to him almost
superhumanly beautiful in that dusty place, for her pink flush and shy
eyes only accentuated her charms. She found it necessary to explain the
intrusion at once, but was so nervous over just the right form of
self-introduction required that she rather lost her head, and stammered
out,
"I--I thought I'd like to see the works and--and you"--then stopped,
feeling how awkward was this beginning.
A smile flitted over his grave countenance.
"I am before you," he said, bowing somewhat elaborately. "If looking
at me can do anybody any good----"
She checked him with a somewhat imperious gesture.
"I am Joyce Lavillotte," she said, growing cool again, "and I would like
to look the place over."
The sentence died into silence before an ejaculation so amazed and
long-drawn it made Joyce's eyes open wide. The man looked ready to
burst into laughter, yet full of respect, too. At length he broke out,
"I beg your pardon! I am so surprised. I supposed you were a man. It's
your name, probably, that deceived me--and then I never thought of a
girl--a young lady--caring to examine into things, and asking for
statistics, and so on. Then your handwriting--it was so bold. And your
methods of expression--well, I have been completely fooled!"

He stopped the voluble flow of words, which Joyce felt instinctively to
be unlike himself, and gazed at her again in a forgetfulness somewhat
embarrassing. Joyce was trying to think of something to say when he
broke out once more, "Yes, I supposed of course you were a man, and
not so very young, either. I had